Tag Archives: twitter

Unfriend Yourself

I got the book Unfriend Yourself by Kyle Tennant and read it this past weekend. It’s not a long book and I was actually finished with it early on Friday but decided to go ahead and take the challenge to unfriend myself for three days on social media.

The book is interesting and poses some intriguing questions on how we use social media. Tennant also lines up social media usage with Scripture. Thought provoking.

What I got from this book, other than the challenge of staying off of social media for three days, was confirmation that I’m doing it right. At least according to the book.

I love social media and I love the people I have met through twitter. My goal in life is to meet my twitter friends and make them into real life friends. I believe that I could have coffee in any part of the world with someone that I “know” from twitter. That’s a cool feeling.

As you know, twitter is my favorite in the social media realm. I have found, as the author did, that Facebook can be a little fake. And I’ve found it can also be a little mean. Mostly, I use Facebook to see photos of the #glambaby. And other people’s little kids. The photos of little kids is my favorite part of Facebook.

Tennant says that social media offers a new kind of social and intellectual environment encouraging false intimacy and feigning friendship. I can see how it could be perceived as that if you aren’t being true to yourself or your friends/followers.

If you know me at all, you know I believe in being REAL. With me, what you see is what you get. The person I am on social media is the person I will be when you meet me in real life. I think it could be very easy to try and let yourself be someone you’re not but since my ultimate goal is to meet every one of my followers in person, being real seems more practical to me.

I wrote in my book that I feel that twitter actually allowed me to be the real me. I tweet what I tweet. Then, when people meet me in real life, they expect me to be me and it’s so cool! 🙂

The one person who came to mind when I was reading this book was Afton Fisher. I love Afton and if I had not been on twitter, I am not sure I ever would have met her in real life. She is a wonderful, kind, and precious soul. She’s a fabulous mommy and wife and I love her. For real.

Afton has told me that she practices WWLD. What Would Lauri Do? Ohhhh. Oh. That always gives me pause. It’s constantly in the back of my head that, at least one person that I love and respect completely, is looking up to me. This would keep me real if nothing else did.

Tennant suggests that we make sure not to forgo in life communion with online communication. This is good advice. When I meet my twitter friends in real life I am SO delighted! It’s really the cherry on top of an already good ice cream sundae.

I think that you can use social media and not be used by it. This would be a good goal to have if you feel that you are becoming enslaved by the medium.

All in all, I think this was a good book to read. It gave me some good things to think about but mostly it confirmed that I’m using social media in a way that is well balanced. And that makes me happy.

So? Did I pop into my social media accounts these three days? I did, I cannot tell a lie. I got an email with three direct messages from a friend who wanted me to call her. While I didn’t go into twitter itself, I did see the direct messages in email form. I also logged into Facebook so I could see a photo of my son’s birthday donuts which were cool and also to tell Beth Hoffman that I really love her new book because I couldn’t wait until Monday. Also, I checked into foursquare today. But, for me, mostly I did a great job on the challenge.

I can’t wait for Monday to get back to normal! 🙂

Follow Friday: The Vesume’ Group

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My friend, Gini Dietrich, does Follow Friday on twitter in a cool way and I’ve been meaning to emulate her for a while now. She chooses one person that she follows and highlights them on her blog.

Back in the day, when I was a very new little twitter bird, my friend Patrick Allmond wrote a blog post about why he didn’t do Follow Friday. It made a whole bunch of sense to me and so I also adopted the practice of not doing strings and strings of #FF tweets. I wish I could share that post with you now. Patrick doesn’t have it posted anymore but, trust me, it made sense. 🙂

My main thought, before reading Patrick’s post was, “What if I miss someone who is awesome?” And I have a lot of awesome followers. All of them in fact. But, I started seeing Gini’s method and thought that would be cool, too. Highlight one awesome person every week.

So today, I feel compelled finally to do just that. And the follower I want to give a shout out to is The Vesume Group.

The Vesume Group is an innovative staffing and employment agency placing IT, Engineering, Accounting/Finance, Manufacturing, and Call Center professionals in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Now, my background is not in any of those fields and I don’t live in Massachusetts or New Hampshire (but I would) so why, you ask, am I making them the choice for my first Follow Friday blog post?

I visited a similar agency in Tulsa on Tuesday. And I did a video resume. I was excited about that because I like to do video and the premise that the video can open a door better than a paper resume really resonated with me. I often wonder how good my paper resume’ is but was told yesterday it contains good stuff.

Anyway…

I tweeted that I had gotten my video resume’ in four takes and I believe that’s when The Vesume’ Group followed me and responded:

@laurirottmayer Take #4 is not bad at all! Congrats on finishing your #video #resume -It will definitely help you get noticed 🙂

— The Vesume Group (@TheVesumeGroup) May 29, 2013

We continued to chat and they told me that I now needed to put my video resume’ every where including right in my Linkedin profile. Well, I was so chicken. I was going to keep it unlisted and then send the link out to prospective employers when I sent my resume’.

@laurirottmayer It will always be nerve wracking to put yourself out there – but remember it is presenting a controlled first impression.

— The Vesume Group (@TheVesumeGroup) May 29, 2013

Oooh controlling the first impression. I love it! And they are right, that’s exactly what a video resume’ does. But I was really nervous and said so. To which they responded:

@laurirottmayer Nothing to be nervous about 🙂 If you captured who you are, then your video resume will be fantastic!

— The Vesume Group (@TheVesumeGroup) May 29, 2013

Well, you all know I can’t be anyone but me so I took the plunge and put it everywhere. I don’t feel so weird about it now that I’ve slept on it. It’s not that different from any other video I’ve done except maybe my hair looks better and that’s a good thing. 😉

So, if you are an IT, Engineering, Accounting/Finance, Manufacturing, or Call Center professional looking for contract, contract-to-hire, and permanent positions throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire, I would tell you that you should contact The Vesume’ Group to help you in your job search.

If they are as helpful to someone who is not in one of those industries, sitting way out in Oklahoma, imagine what they can do for you.

If you aren’t one of the people described above, I still recommend you follow The Vesume’ Group on twitter because they are good people. And you can’t have too many good people in your twitter stream. 🙂

Thank you so much to The Vesume’ Group for being so awesome to me and encouraging me in a rare moment of “holy smokes I can’t do that”. You rock!

Carpe-ing the java @CoffeeCON2013 style

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Yesterday, was CoffeeCON 2013 (@coffeecon2013) and it was amazing!

Before going to CoffeeCON, I was finally able to meet up with Ruthann (@RAWiesner) for breakfast. She took me to a place where they bring donuts to the table like they bring rolls or chips and salsa at other places.

How can you not love a place like that? I had an amazing frittata with spinach, bacon and tomatoes. Yum!

Then it was off to the event du jour: CoffeeCON!

Just opening the door you know was fabulous because you could smell all of the different coffee offerings.

When we got to CoffeeCON, we found my twitter friend, Debra (@debramariem).

Debra is terrific, too, and we had fun hanging out together, visiting the vendor booths, the classes and our other twitter friends,

Coffee Nate (@CoffeeNate) and Robert Caruso (@fondalo) who were bloggers at the conference.

One of the things I was most looking forward to was talking to the roasters. There were several different options there including a woman who was roasting beans with a heat gun (yes, like the one from Lowe’s) and a guy who had repurposed his hot air popcorn popper to roast coffee. He was very excited with his roaster and was cute to listen to.

There were two roasters, though, that had machines that seem like what I would use to roast coffee which I believe is the next frontier for me.

We watched coffee demos and attended a couple of classes.

I was really taken with the siphon coffee maker and think I’m going to have to have one of those. I was sad that we didn’t get to see the Turkish Coffee demo. She had some kind of a water issue but I did get the instructions for making the coffee so will be trying that at home soon. 🙂

Right before I left, I thanked the show producer, Kevin Sinnot (@coffeekevin), for his fabulous event. He wanted to interview me because I had come from Oklahoma for the show. I did that and said my goodbyes.

It was such a great time. Great coffee, great people. I can’t wait to return next year and bring/meet more friends. Will you join me? 🙂

My crazy mixed up day

I’m not a number

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Yesterday on twitter, I started seeing all of these tweets.

Hmmm Kred. I had been there at least once. I always go and check things out to see what they are about, if they are useful. I see people giving other people +Kred (whatever that is) but I don’t live in there and the number certainly doesn’t concern me.

Still, I was intrigued and clicked through to see my score. Hmm. It’s pretty high? Why am I not a 1% Elite Kredster? In the middle of a tornadic afternoon, I found myself starting to feel concerned, ripped off even, that I hadn’t made the cut.

Well, in my inbox this morning was the golden email. There it was:

Thank God they realized it! Ha!

In the light of day, well, it’s still dark but as I sit here with my new prize, I come back to the idea I’ve believed since Klout started messing around with their algorithms, I’m not a number!

I deactivated my Klout account several algorithm changes ago because, the way I read it, I was going to be penalized for interacting with “less influential” persons than myself. I call BS on that!

I love all of the people I meet on twitter. It’s such a rich and diverse group that you’d have a hard time assembling in real life on a daily basis. I learn and gain from ALL of them not just the top dog Klout wise.

When I started seeing articles that employers weren’t even looking at your resume’ if you didn’t have a certain Klout score, I thought, “now the world has really gone mad”.

I think that within my sphere I am influential to a certain degree. When I get excited, people get excited right along with me. I can see this with my own eyes and I don’t need a number to prove it.

I have gotten some very nice, real life, tokens of appreciation from various brands because of this quality. I haven’t even blogged about my trip to Washington DC as a guest of Eight O’Clock Coffee and I really should. It was a dream trip. Did they look at my Klout score to pick me? No, I don’t think so because when you go to Klout and look for me, you see this:

No, they saw me actually influencing others regarding their brand. I’ve been drinking their coffee since I was 15. It’s my favorite and it’s not a secret. I drink it, I hoard it, I tweet about it. This is real, not some put on. They noticed, called me a Super Fan, and flew me to DC for the experience of a lifetime.

I think the numbers are probably fun to a certain extent but should they mean anything in real life? I would give a hearty NO! to that.

So, if my klout score is the reason that someone will or won’t hire me, I guess I’m destined to be an unemployed trophy wife forever. Dang the bad luck! 😉

Rock me, rock me, roll me through the night

Lauri Rottmayer

Catch the Rottitude!

Tag Archives: twitter

Follow Friday: The Vesume’ Group

Rock me, rock me, roll me through the night

Born on date